


A City of Rotten Things

by Alemantele



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 19:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4678076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alemantele/pseuds/Alemantele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They execute people for this,” Hamlet says, finally. </p><p>“For killing?” </p><p>“For killing shadowhunters.” </p><p>“What if the Clave is wrong?” Horatio asks, and everything comes crashing down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A City of Rotten Things

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I could say this is the weirdest crossover I've ever written, but that wouldn't even be true.

“Do you think I’ve damned myself then?” Hamlet asks. He wipes his fingers on his shirt carelessly, leaving behind streaks of bright red. “Is that it?”

Horatio looks down at Claudius’s body and can’t push away the urge to cringe back. “Why is this any different than everything else you’ve done?”

“I’ve just killed a man,” Hamlet says, his tone far too light for the words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush. “In cold blood. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” He casts his eyes up to the ceiling like he might find whatever deity he needed to speak to to absolve his guilt up there.

“You’ve killed plenty of demons before,” Horatio finds himself saying, the words he’s always been too afraid of before finally spilling out of his mouth, “downworlders too. Do those not count, now?”   
  
Hamlet jerks back, halfway to picking up his blade. He looks at Horatio with wide, dark eyes.

“Of course not, right?” Horatio asks, sadly.

Hamlet doesn’t understand. Hamlet’s grown up knowing nothing but murder. Hamlet’s been taught that everything the Nephilim say or do is Law and it’s his job to kill whoever doesn’t agree.

Hamlet’s grown up thinking people like Horatio are silly little mundanes, not important enough to even be included in the world of monsters and shadowhunters.

“Of course not,” Hamlet echoes. He sounds faint.

 

* * *

 

_“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” Hamlet said, laughing, “than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”_

_“What is that supposed to mean?”_

_Hamlet kicked open the door to the bar, and Horatio blinked. It was at first glance utterly normal, but if Horatio concentrated, he could see people walking about with skin as green as peas, people with horns protruding from their foreheads, people brushing glittering wings out of the way as they walked through the crowd._

_“Close your mouth and get in,” Hamlet snapped, but not without affection._

_Horatio rolled his eyes, but he followed Hamlet into the bar._

_Later, when this new world proved to be a darker place than the glimmering scene in the bar, he followed Hamlet all the same._

 

* * *

 

Horatio realizes Hamlet isn’t going to move from where he’s still kneeling at Claudius’s body. He leans down to pick up Hamlet’s blade for him, then, and gingerly wipes it on the fallen tablecloth before sheathing it.

Wordlessly, he offers it out to Hamlet.

“Of course…,” Hamlet says again, but trails off. He snatches up the blade, quick and elegant, just like always.

“You’ve done the right thing,” Horatio says, knowing this deep in his bones somehow. “Claudius was a murderer.”

Hamlet nods absently, hooking the sheathed sword back at his waist. He stares at the spilled wine for a long time.

“They execute people for this,” Hamlet says, finally.

“For killing?”   
  
“For killing shadowhunters.”

Horatio wonders what the punishment would be, then, if he died instead. He voices this thought aloud.

Hamlet smiles painfully. “The Clave might reprimand me for losing a mundane, but…”

“But that would be it.”

Hamlet inclines his head. “We’re supposed to be able to support each other. Last stand in times of crisis and all that,” he says, cracking a small smile. “I suppose you wouldn’t understand.”

 _There’s so much I_ wouldn’t _understand, isn’t there?_ Horatio thinks, but does not say it. “What if you killed a vampire, then, when you weren’t supposed to?” he asks instead.   
  
“Well I’d be doing my job, wouldn’t I?”

Horatio stares at Hamlet in disbelief, before sweeping his gaze around the halls, taking in all the death and decay that surrounds them. Laertes and Gertrude are dead. Claudius is dead. Hamlet could’ve been dead too.

The empty institute seems to swallow him up whole.

Horatio wonders how many people have died in this exact room. He wonders how many duels have been fought--friendly or not. He wonders what kind of a world this must be, to have the notion of a friendly duel with sharpened blades so easily accepted by everyone.

Perhaps the silence was getting to him. Hamlet jumps up, pacing the ground in agitated circles, pulling his hands through his hair. “You _don’t_ understand, Horatio, I--I never thought I would actually kill Claudius and I just--I thought I was prepared to lose everything but--it was so _easy_ and--” he cuts himself off, whirling around and facing Horatio with an anguished expression.

Horatio holds the stare.

“I could lose my _life_ for this!” Hamlet cries.

 

* * *

 

_“Do you think there’s a God, then?” Horatio asked one day._

_Hamlet raised an eyebrow. “Well, of course.”_

_See, Horatio’d never been able to wrap his head around the fact that there was something else in this world. Hamlet had blown his mind, showing him a world of demons and monsters and all the myths he’d heard growing up, but…_

_But the notion of anything after death other than darkness was still so foreign to him._

_“How are you so sure?”_   
  
_Hamlet laughed. “How could I doubt? Did you know that vampires can’t speak the name of God? That they’re damned the moment they climb out of their own graves and live on stolen time?” Hamlet shook his head, touching one of the ever present dark marks on his wrist. “Besides, how could I be the best at my job if there wasn’t someone up there telling me what to do all the damn time?”_

 _“Is that why you do it, then?” Horatio asked. “Because you believe in an afterworld?”_   
  
_Hamlet shrugged. “I don’t know why I do what I do.” He flicked the blade that was ever present in his hand, gesturing so casually with it Horatio could believe he grew up holding knives._

_“Do you believe in an afterworld then?”_

_Hamlet gave him a brilliant smile. “Sure.”_

_Horatio pursed his lips, trying to imagine waking up after the world had gone dark for the last time. “I’ve never been able to,” he admitted, thinking of oblivion and the sensation of complete and utter nothingness for all of eternity. “It must be nice to have a purpose for your life and all that.”_

 

* * *

 

“Claudius killed your father. And he wanted to kill all the downworlders. He was evil,” Horatio says, almost on autopilot, babbling now. “What else were you supposed to do? It the right thing to do. Didn’t you say it was the divine right of the son to avenge a father’s death?”

 

Hamlet laughs. Loudly, and suddenly, and the sound fills up the empty hall as nothing had before.

 

* * *

 

_“I’d follow him,” Hamlet said, eyes dull._

_Horatio realized what he was talking about almost instantly. “You can’t. Hamlet, you_ can’t _\--I know it hurts that your father died but you_ can’t _do anything rash--”_

_“I’m not going to,” Hamlet cut in. “But I wish I could.”_

_There was a long silence._

_Horatio studied Hamlet’s stony face until he was certain that Hamlet was telling the truth. Then, he hesitantly dared to ask, “Why can’t you?”_

_The wry smile he’d grown so used to made its way back on Hamlet’s face. “I can’t very well damn myself, can I?” he asked, and Horatio understood._

_Later, in the privacy of his own room, Horatio wondered just how Hamlet could be afraid of continuation._

* * *

 

“Who are we,” Hamlet says, later, sitting against the wall, “to act upon God’s will? Remember, if it be now, ‘tis not yet to come.”

Horatio sits next to him, wondering when the Inquisitor would arrive, wondering when this tiny fragile world they’d been building since Hamlet stabbed Claudius through the chest would crumble.

“If it be not yet to come, it will be now,” he finishes. “I never claimed to be an agent of God.”

“And I did?” Hamlet snaps back, fiery as ever.

Horatio leans his head on the marble of the wall. Hamlet told him, once, that shadowhunters built their prison out of the ashes of their dead, so resolute to uphold their Law in every aspect of their life. “Yes,” he murmurs. “‘We make the Law, and we uphold the Law’,” Horatio quotes, tiredly.

Hamlet stares at him for a very long time. The dark marks on his neck make him look paler, Horatio suddenly thinks, especially in this fallen and broken hall.

“What if the Clave is wrong?” Horatio asks, and everything comes crashing down.

 

* * *

 

 _“Can’t you do anything about it?” Horatio asked when they left the bar, feeling uneasy about the dead werewolf boy and Hamlet’s lack of a response. “Isn’t the Clave supposed to be...policing or something?”_   
  
_Hamlet’s mouth was a bitter line. “The Clave cannot do anything unless a shadowhunter sees the crime committed.”_

 _“That’s absurd.”_   
  
_“We make the Law,” Hamlet said, sounding like he was reciting a line he’d heard from somewhere, “and we uphold the Law.”_

 

* * *

 

“So that’s it then,” Hamlet says, breaking the silence.

“What is?”

“I’m damned either way. All that time spent wondering and I’m a murderer after all.” He drags a hand through his hair, leaving behind flecks of dried blood. “And all this time I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“We all do.”   
  
“Why did you never say anything before?”   
  
“You wouldn’t have listened.”   
  
“True.”

Horatio reaches out, puts a hand to Hamlet’s shoulder. “You’re listening now, that’s all that matters.”

Hamlet squeezes his eyes shut. “Nothing matters anymore. I’m to be punished--justly so.” He turns and gives Horatio a sad smile. “All that’s done is done, isn’t it? Can I trouble you for one last thing?”

“Don’t say goodbye.”

“I never say goodbye--” and he never had “--those are for people who have regrets.”

“What is it then?”   
  
“Tell somebody my story, someday, Horatio. You’ve all the time in the world.”

“So do you.”   
  
Another laugh. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” Hamlet looks at him with a severity he’s never had in his face before. Hamlet turns to wit more often than seriousness, treats everything in the world like a joke--even when he came to Horatio with anguish in his eyes, there would always be a sharp remark at the tip of his tongue. “But no matter how harshly the Clave acts or how painful this stupid world is, promise me, Horatio. Please.”

“I promise,” Horatio says, his throat feeling dry.

Hamlet smiles.

Then, there is only silence until the Inquisitor comes.

 

* * *

 

_Polonius had always been completely unable to pull any answers out of Hamlet._

_Now, the Clave having ordered him questioning Hamlet for the string of mysterious downworlder murders around the city and all the poor man could do is read off questions as Hamlet threw them back in his face._

_“I suppose you could be as young and able as me,” Hamlet said, and even without being able to see him Horatio knew he was probably smirking, “if you could somehow turn back time and age backwards.” He laughed, his voice full of malice._

_Horatio frowned and paced behind the doors. Hamlet never took anything seriously. Perhaps this might’ve been a good time to._

_Hamlet was talking about clouds, now, never mind the fact that they were clearly indoors. Horatio fought the urge to jump in there and shake Hamlet whilst telling him to take things seriously for once. There was nothing but obvious contempt of authority and disrespect that they could pin on Hamlet, now, but even Horatio thought that acting so obnoxiously wouldn’t bode well for the future._

_Nobody had ever told him much about the Clave before, but Horatio was already starting to suspect that perhaps making an enemy of them was a terrible idea._

 

* * *

 

A week later, Hamlet shows up at his door.

Horatio stares, startled. When they’d taken Hamlet--laughing--away, he thought that was the end of it all. He’d gone home, locked the door, and resigned himself to being forever trapped beyond that magical new world Hamlet had shown him.

And now he was back.

“Missed me?” Hamlet asks, smirking. He hooks a thumb through his belt loop, leaning against Horatio’s door frame.

“How?” is the only thing Horatio can manage.

Hamlet shrugs. “They figured that since Claudius did the whole killed off dear old dad schtick, I could get off light.” He makes a face, something more than just the casual flippancy he’s exuding right now flashing for half a second before disappearing. “‘Course, to the Clave, ‘getting off lightly’ meant exile.”

Horatio tries to process the information, and when it finally dawns on him that Hamlet is _back_ and Hamlet can _stay_ a burst of startled, relieved laughter comes. He rushes forwards and pulls Hamlet into a hug.

He feels warm hands on his back, squeezing back and returning the hug in earnest.

When Hamlet pulls back, Horatio grabs onto his hand, not wanting to let go. The movement makes him notice the unmarked skin at Hamlet’s wrist.

Horatio pulls Hamlet’s wrist up, turning it this way and that, examining the pale expanse of skin underneath. “Are they all gone?”   
  
Hamlet grimaces, but swallows the expression with a familiar wry grin. “Hamlet the Mundane always had a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

 

* * *

 

_“What’s a parabatai?” Horatio asked, knees knocking against Hamlet’s in the library. The word had popped up twice in the same paragraph detailing Nephilim fighting styles, and this strange word felt odd on Horatio’s tongue for the first time._

_Hamlet looked up from absentmindedly flipping his small dagger. “It’s a partnership thing,” he said flippantly. He leaned over Horatio’s shoulder, pointing at the word in the paragraph. “It’s supposed to be for fighting pairs, see.”_

_“Why not just call it a ‘partner’ or something, then?” It was something Horatio’d been noticing about this strange world--there would always be some complicated sounding term for utterly ordinary items._

_Hamlet made a face. “Apparently parabatai are life long partners.” He shrugged, propping his feet up on the chair next to them and leaning back into Horatio as he goes back to flipping the knife. “It all sounds like utter nonsense to me anyways.”_

_A long time later, in an alleyway fight with a Greater Demon, Hamlet looked at Horatio with a faint smirk as Horatio dropped the blade that saved both their lives._

_“I wish the Clave didn’t have such stupid rules for not being parabatai with mundanes,” Hamlet said._

_It took Horatio a while to understand--perhaps his brain had yet to come back online after they’d both nearly died--but when he did, he couldn’t keep the broad smile from his face._

_“Who said I would’ve wanted to be your parabatai anyways?” he shot back. “I still think it’s a stupid term.”_

_Hamlet laughed, the sound breathless and sweet and filled with delighted relief. “You should be honoured! Out of all the people in the world I could’ve chose, I picked you! A silly mundane!”_

_Horatio’s laughter joined his, and, that night, they stumbled into Horatio’s apartment again, Hamlet shouting silly things about appreciating his heart of hearts and Horatio being mistress of his soul all the way._

 

* * *

 

That night, squished up against Hamlet in his small bed, they breathe in tandem and Horatio reminds himself that Hamlet is still here.

Hamlet whispers in his ear, “You’re right, you know.”

“About what?” 

“The Clave is wrong.”   
  
Horatio snorts. “Of course they are.”

“When Claudius sent me away from the institute,” Hamlet says, and Horatio realizes that he’s only shared a small part of this story before, “I stayed with a werewolf. They’re quite pleasant, people, really.”   
  
“Of course.” Horatio thinks about the times he’s had stimulating conversations with downwolders in their hangouts, and how they’d never made a move to harm him, as unarmed and mundane as he was.

Hamlet snakes an arm around Horatio’s waist. “I want to do something.” 

“You always want to do something.”   
  
“I want to change things.”   
  
“So did Claudius,” Horatio shoots back. He’d once thought that perhaps Claudius was onto something, him and his circle of followers, because the Clave was so horrendously wrong about everything that it made sense that someone would want to oppose them. But he was proven wrong and Claudius was crazier than all the other Nephilim combined.

“Claudius didn’t know what he was doing,” Hamlet says, tense, now.

“Go to sleep,” Horatio says, leaning back into Hamlet’s embrace. “We’ll talk about taking down the Clave or whatever it is you want in the morning.”

Hamlet’s quiet laughter is soft breath against his neck. “Whatever you say,” he says, then falls silent.

 

* * *

 

_“Not bad for a mundane. You actually killed it.”_

_“Did you just call me a mundane?”_   
  
_“That’s what you are, isn’t it?”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_The boy snorted. “I take back what I said before. You’re rather slow after all, aren’t you?”_

_“I did stab that creature, didn’t I?” Horatio asked faintly, barely noticing that the boy was probably taunting him._

_The boy laughed. “Quite an accurate stab too. I could’ve done better myself, but you took my knife there.” The boy with the knife looked dangerous, his face as sharp as his blade and his dark eyes sunk in deep hollows in his face. Horatio’s first instinct was to shrink back, but there was something deathly fascinating in how the boy snatched the knife away from Horatio’s hands._

_“What was that?” Horatio asked, curiosity eating at him despite everything._

_The boy grabbed his hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll explain as we walk. I’m Hamlet, by the way.”_

_“Horatio.” And then he followed Hamlet down the street, wondering what he’d gotten himself into._

* * *

 

Hamlet kicks the door open and spread his unmarked hands out like the street outside is some new wonder he’s showing off.

Horatio steps out after him, though, raising an eyebrow and pretending to be shocked just to humour him. “Where are we headed off to today, partner?” he asks lightly.

This time, when Hamlet laughs, it sounds almost like he’s happy about it. “We’re going to change the world, my friend!” he cries, almost triumphantly.

Later, Horatio will ask Hamlet why he turned on everything he’s ever known so quickly. Hamlet will look at him, his smile sad but sincere for once, and say, “We are not meant to be gods, Horatio.”


End file.
